HELP! Is there a train route from Spain to Italy??

The shortest train ride between those two cities will take a little over 20 hours and include 2 changes. Most of journeys on that route will take 26 hours and include 3 stops.

Go to DB Bahn website to see your options. (Remember, you can't see schedules more than three months from today.)

Flying between these two cities is not cheap and would include at least one change. You might want to think about say taking the train to Madrid, flying to Milan, and then the train to Turin.

Edit...I did some more searching and found that Ryanair flies nonstop from Madrid to Turin. This might be the cheapest and fastest. Train to Madrid, flight to Turin.

And the cost of the train will be high, especially if you want sleeping accommodations.
If you do decide to fly, you may get a good rate on Spanair, which flies Malaga-Barcelona-Turin.

The others are right on. Spain is not well connected by rail to the rest of Europe. Going by rail would make sense if you were stopping along the way at Barcelona or along the French Med. But southern Spain to northern Italy really calls for flying.

I do not know the details, but there was an item in our paper today about a train that goes from Barcelona to Milan. Unfortunately, the reason that it was reported was, that in this instance, the French did not connect the right coaches and the passengers ended up in Zurich. Not sure how you find out about that train, but perhaps googling it would bring up the item which may give you some clue as to what train it was.

Valentina, The travel route suggested by Frank II is about the easiest and most direct. However, if you're using RyanAir, BE SURE to pack light! As this is your first trip to Europe, pre-reading the Guideboook Europe Through The Back Door would be a really good idea (if you haven't already read it). Happy travels!

Thank you to everyone who has given their advice! I was looking into flying from Malaga to Paris and then taking the train from Paris to Turin, which is about 5 hours...does anyone have any experience with this? Do you think this is a good idea?

Valentina, given the particular route you're travelling, there are several options. Flying to Paris and then train to Turin is certainly one option, but keep in mind that the travel time will be longer than 5-hours. You'll need to allow time to get from the airport to whichever Paris station your train is departing from, and the rail trip itself will be 6-hours or more with probably 2 changes. ¶ Another option might be to travel from Malaga to Barcelona by train and then by air to MXP, as there are a lot more flights available from Barcelona. You could also travel to Barcelona / Girona and fly DIRECTLY to Turin with RyanAir. Of course, there will also be airport transfer times involved with those options, but from Milano Centrale the trip to Turin is under two hours. ¶ I'd need to sit and work through the various options. Good luck!

Go to www.seat61.com. All of your train travel problems will be addressed there, rest assured.

Unfortunately, George, the OP might not be "assured," since the seat61 website doesn't deal with this particular issue. Frank II's response does.

Seat61 is a good site, but has two major cons: (1) it caters to British passengers travelling to/from UK; (2) it assumes that every journey in Europe MUST be taken over tracks, with insane recommendations like 28 hours-journeys from London to Lisbon. Don't take everything written there at face value: the site is good, but is written by someone who is against air travel as a start point.